This weekend we had some pretty heavy rains which revealed leaks in places we didn’t know we had them. And I am not using literary license when I say that. Two years ago we had 6 weeks of rain and there weren’t leaks anywhere near where it was cascading down the walls yesterday.

As a result, I spent the day repositioning fans to blow the carpet dry. However, before I left this evening I had to unplug many of them and return them backstage because they were being used for our production of the Odyssey opening this weekend. Not a few people remarked how fortuitous it was that the production design required us to buy fans to replicate the winds in the story.

One of the things I like about working in a creative setting is that one has requisite tools for said creation at one’s disposal for other purposes. You are able to respond better to problems when they tend to crop up. For example, we don’t need to put in work orders to replace light bulbs because we have ladders and genie lifts. We can rewire broken lighting fixtures, solder wires back together and test for circuit continuity. We can tighten what is loose and patch what is leaking.

Well, up to a point anyway. This weekend, all my staff could do was mop up what was leaking. Our theory is that a cast iron drain pipe has cracked in a place we can’t get to.

Of course, some times self sufficiency can be a curse as well. Since our facilities are used after normal work hours, we have the janitorial department provide us with extra stock for the restrooms in case we run out in the middle of a performance. Since the cast and crew often use the building directly behind us, we often end up restocking the restrooms there as well. Heck, about 8-10 years ago, I learned how to stop a urinals and toilets from constantly flushing and return them to service. I have been fixing the problem ever since saving lots of water. Some member of the custodial staff is getting off easy during our show runs!

Given that I have had to master a wide variety of financial, desktop publishing, database, image manipulation and word processing software in the course of my job, I figure I have picked up a goodly amount of skills in my life.

Last week I suggested that being in the arts hadn’t really helped out my math scores as much as the arts education advocacy ads suggest. I can’t deny that being involved with the arts has provided me with self confidence, self-reliance and the ability manipulate the world and address the challenges I encounter both physically and virtually.

Has participation in the creative arts prepared me for life in ways that other academic subjects, television, movies and video games never can?

You betcha.

Will it do the same for your kids? Like everything else, it depends on how long they are involved and how thoroughly they embrace it. The current stage craft class at my theatre has involved themselves with a gusto and in numbers I have never seen and the professor has rarely seen. If I knew what it was that was motivating this group, I would bottle it.

I know they are growing in knowledge and skill from the experience because they are coming in when there is no class and using what they have learned to create projects for other class—far in advance of deadlines! (Honestly, I think they are pod people or something, they are so atypical of the usual students in this class.)

So yes, working in the arts might be a thankless job with long hours, little pay and low prestige. It may not make the most convincing ad copy for the arts in education people, but I have always prized my experience in the arts for the self-reliance having such a wide variety of tools at ones disposal affords you.

As much as I love to see the arts kept in K-12 education, I am often a little skeptical about how effective arts exposure is to improving math scores, etc. Cause frankly, I had a fair bit of arts exposure and I got awful math grades. Some of my doubts come partially as a backlash to the make your baby an Einstein by playing Mozart while they are in the womb movement.

I think the thing that turns me off about the Mozart genius babies is that uses the music prescriptively rather than encouraging trying to comprehend music and learn about Mozart. The whole K-12 has always seemed similar in that it implies you just add arts for quick instant SAT scores.

I had a couple entries about six months ago on the statistical correlations between arts experiences in youth and attendance as an adult so I won’t get in to any of that again. (Again noting, I was never good in math.)

But perhaps I protest too much about being bad in math. I have to concede my comprehension did come later in life. I still can’t do calculus, but I do see the relationships I didn’t before. And my claims of doing poorly in math are not entirely true. As a junior in high school, I was flabbergasted to learn I had gotten an A on the state regents’ math exam. This was mostly due to the fact the exam was heavy with logic problems which have a strong verbal component.

My verbal skills haven’t been overly lacking and I could probably credit the arts for cultivating those skills in part. So technically, the arts probably did help me with my math scores, at least for one year.

As the Boston Globe article on the value of arts education I posted on mentioned, there are all sorts of ancillary benefits to the development of a person. I believe that being in school plays in elementary and high school helped develop my confidence and gain me a modicum of respect among peers outside my general circle of friends.

And while I haven’t made my million and probably never will, I have done well enough in the arts that I could walk proudly into my class reunion next month. (Unfortunately, I can’t make it 🙁 )

What we need are ads soliciting support of the arts in school that tout the benefits as more than a recipe for better grades. There are other arguments that people can identify more closely with than grades. Granted, that is the focus of schools and if you want arts in schools, the grade improvement has to be there. But parents are also looking for schools to make their kids better people. History and science lectures aren’t going to be able to accomplish that as well as hands-on creative activities.

The best way to make the appeal for arts in schools might not be the most obvious. I had read somewhere recently that most anti-drug ads have failed to lead to a drop in drug use until the current campaign showing kids just lethargically sitting around doing nothing and having no impact on the world. Whether the impact will be long lived or if the drop in use is just coincidental, I don’t know.

The ads that had run prior to the campaign showing people getting in dangerous situations leading to death and injury met with the approval of older folks who tended to value safety in their lives. The concept of danger actually appealed to kids who tend to believe themselves immortal and they went out and tried drugs. These new ads make older folks uneasy because they explicitly say, I tried drugs and nobody died implying drugs aren’t dangerous. But apparently kids see the users portrayed as not being the life of the party and are having second thoughts.

My point is, the most convincing argument for arts education in schools might not be the most obvious one or the one people are most comfortable with. The best argument might end up promoting the value of non-arts activities too.